1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a one-piece, open-ended, water-cooled continuous casting mold, especially intended for use in casting steel, and to a method of making such a mold.
2. Description of the Prior Art
One-piece, open-ended, water-cooled molds are generally used for casting billet formats up to 160 mm. edge length and also for smaller bloom formats. Whereas formerly the molds were formed from a forged bloom with cooling bores, nowadays they are generally made of thin-walled construction from a drawn copper tube which is secured in a water cooling box so that the mold in that box is surrounded by a water jacket in which water flows in contraflow direction relative to the molten steel flowing through the mold and washes evenly around the mold walls. Molds of this type are described in "Handbuch des Stranggiessens" (Continuous casting manual) 1958, page 395.
In split molds for continuous casting of the type used for casting larger cross-section formats of billets and particularly slabs, it is also known to deposit metallic layers of nickel out of electrolyte solutions on the inside of the mold with a view to improving the service life of the molds and with a view to reducing the susceptibility of the castings produced therein to longitudinal, transverse and cross-cracking and also reducing the effects of damage to the mold which may be caused by the cold casting. To this end German No. OS 30 38 289, for example, specifies a current-carrying as well as also a current-less nickel deposition or plating process in which hard-material particles are also admixed to the nickel. However, with one-piece, open-ended water-cooled continuous casting molds such internal galvanic plating could not be successfully achieved because the 1/100 mm. dimensional precision requirement can only be met by very expensive internal machining. For this reason one-piece open-ended continuous casting chill molds consisting of drawn copper tube have a comparatively short service life at the end of which they are usually scrapped.